


But that's another story

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Extracanonical pain, Gen, Maglor dies in the Dagor Bragollach AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-14
Updated: 2015-12-14
Packaged: 2018-05-06 17:57:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5426378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maedhros picks up a pen to write to his brothers in Nargothrond of a death in the family.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But that's another story

**Author's Note:**

> An anon on Tumblr prompted me to write about what would happen if Maglor had died in the Dagor Bragollach. Sorry for any additional pain caused.

Maedhros sat at his desk, staring out of the window at the still roiling, smoky grey sky, not really seeing it. He spun his pen in his hand, gritting his teeth angrily as it slipped from his fingers. He picked it up, dipped it in ink, and set the nib to the paper, a blot already beginning to form, before laying it to one side and choosing a pencil instead.

This was not a letter he wanted to write, and he barely knew what to say. Words seemed to have deserted him as images flickered through his mind;  _smoke in the air, the plains a burning red-brown nightmare, dying soldiers dragging themselves to Himring with horrific burns…_

 _His brother, who never made it to Himring_.

The white paper stared back at him. He knew he would have to write something, but words seemed to have deserted him.

 _After all Macalaurë_ , he thought,  _it was always you that had the best way with words_.

——-

Celegorm held the paper quite steady as he read; being still was a skill of Celegorm’s and always had been. But even so, Curufin could see his brother’s fingers twitch just a fraction, as though restraining himself from crumpling the sheet into nothing.

The letter was brief and blunt, even by their eldest brother’s usual standards, and Curufin felt himself draw in a breath involuntarily as he came up behind Celegorm to read over his shoulder.

The silence hung thick and heavy in the room between them as they both struggled to understand, to make sense of the words in smudged black ink on the paper, inscribed starkly in Maedhros’ small, cramped handwriting.

They both flinched a little as the door opened quietly.

“Father, uncle, I…”

They both turned around at once, and Curufin saw his son at the door. It must have been their gazes, for Celebrimbor had stopped mid sentence, only half over the threshold.

Curufin struggled to compose himself. “Tyelpë…”

Celebrimbor swallowed, coming into the room and closing the door behind him. Curufin watched as his son’s eyes darting to the letter and back to Curufin’s face.

“What is it? News?”

Curufin nodded silently, and at the same time Celegorm began to read, the words falling heavy in the room.

“ _Tyelko, Curvo -_

_Macalaurë is dead, slain as his people fled the fires. I wish I did not have to tell you by letter. We rode out to his aid from Himring, but came too late. I am sorry. The Gap and Thargelion have fallen, though I have retaken Aglon. Rumour has it that Moryo has taken his people into hiding with Ambarussa’s in Ossiriand, but nothing is certain. Do you know any more of this, perhaps from the birds and beasts of the forest, Tyelko? Please reply if you are able, to let me know you received this. Have been sending messengers out, and can only hope they make it. The first ones were slain on the road, I suppose. Stay in Nargothrond with your people for as long as you may. Roads to Himring are still not safe, and orcs roam the woods. We are doing all we can. Will keep you updated, if the messengers can get through._

_Be safe,_

_Nelyafinwë._ ”

The three of them stood in silence for a little while longer. Finally Celebrimbor spoke, horror in his voice. “Uncle Macalaurë…”

Curufin nodded stiffly. “Yes.” He compressed his lips, trying to arrange his face into something resembling stoicism, but feeling as though he was failing. “Yes, it… it would seem so.”

Celegorm gave a snarl and crushed the letter in his hand at last, his teeth gritted. “The Dark One will pay. We will not let him pick us off one by one. We have to go north, we must - ”

“What we must do” said Curufin sharply, picking up the letter from where Celegorm had hurled it to the floor, his voice brittle, “is stay here in Nargothrond, as Nelyo says.”

Celegorm scowled. “Damn what Nelyo says. We have to go, we have to…”

“To what, exactly?” Curufin snapped, repressing the image of their brother burning in the flames whose smoke they had seen in the North, fighting the orcs that flooded like black spiders from the ash of their lands. “We’ve already suffered heavy enough losses.”

“Our brother is  _dead_ , Curvo” growled Celegorm, as Celebrimbor stood still as marble, watching them in silence. “And you would do nothing?”

“I would  _survive_ ” said Curufin, more forcefully than he had intended. His face was growing hot, and angry tears of shock threatening to spill from his own eyes, but he pushed them away, swallowing the lump of pain in his throat and wiping his face carefully icy-blank. “Nelyo is right.” he nodded at the letter. “I know some of us find it difficult to wait for the right moment…” he glared at Celegorm, “…and would want to carry out some sort of foolishly noble attempt at revenge…”

Celegorm ground his teeth, his face twisting into an awful, pained grin. “Revenge? No. I’m not that blind to reality quite yet, brother. But… but something…” Celegorm tailed off.

Curufin thought about his second eldest brother, Maglor the lord and the singer, the sorrowful king at Mithrim, Maglor wracked with guilt at Maedhros’ bedside as he recovered. And before that, of the young brilliantly talented prince of Tirion. Of the tall figure who used to pick him up under the arms when he was a child with an exasperated sigh and sing to him until Curufin fell asleep in the floating patterns of his brother’s voice, warm and cared for. Who years later did the same for Celebrimbor. He thought of Maglor fleeing the flames, and then of Maedhros - _anger in his eyes, the same silver as their father’s, and oh, they should have been there fighting at Maedhros’ side, the two of them should have done something, perhaps that would have been enough to_  - and he shook his head, to clear it of the confused maelstrom of hurt and anger that was beginning to flood him.

He looked over at Celegorm, who, seemingly without even realising he was doing so, had taken out his hunting knife and was digging it into the upholstered arm of the fine chair in which he had sat down heavily. Celegorm made a sudden movement with a snarl of anger that sounded like the keening of a trapped creature, and made a sudden expert slash in the fabric with the knife, precise as though he were skinning a rabbit. Stuffing exploded everywhere in a moment, but for once Curufin did not feel like needling his brother for showing poor conduct as a guest. He looked over at Celebrimbor, still standing frozen with shock, pale as though all the blood had drained from his face.

“Father” began Celebrimbor. “What are we to do?”

Curufin thought perhaps Celegorm would interrupt, but his brother merely looked on resentfully, now digging into the wood of the chair arm with his blade. “We will carry on” said Curufin decisively.

The silence rang in the room long after his words.

——–

Sometimes, Maedhros wondered what would have been different if Maglor had lived. Would the fair words of his brother have availed them to gain any more aid in the attack on Angband, or helped to rally their people, helped even a few more escape the terrible toll the Nirnaeth Arnoediad had taken? Would Maglor have been for or against the plan in its entirety? Maedhros wished he could say. He felt as though his brother’s very memory, the words and patterns of him, were slipping away faster than he could grasp.

Perhaps, he thought sometimes, perhaps the best part of him had died with Maglor, the part that waited for the right moment, that was patient and calculating… perhaps he would not have made trial of their strength so soon, and perhaps the cost would not have been quite so dreadful.

Then again, Maedhros had no way of knowing.

He wished Maglor were here, to sing for the dead, to make a memorial of it. To write it into history as a heroic final stand at least, not the futile bloodbath that it had been. Maedhros looked around his remaining brothers, busy with the survivors around their pitiful forest camp. He wished he could think of something to say to them, some sort of restitution.

But the words would not come.

He supposed, all things considered, that in the end it wouldn’t have made all that much difference.

——-

All his brothers were dead now, Ambarussa slain by the shore, blood mingling with the wet sand. Maedhros thought he could hear singing in the salty wind on the shore. That or the howling of unquiet spirits in the deserted houses of the Havens of Sirion. He turned his head away, wiping his sword clean of blood. All the people were gone. There was nothing to be found here, not anymore, not after his last remaining brother’s body had been burned with proper ceremony.

Maedhros knew that there was no more to be done here now either, not after Elwing had jumped from the tower upon the headland, the jewel clutched to her breast. He wondered what he should do now, finding no answer. Bide his time, he supposed. Wait for the next chance.

It would be a long, lonely and weary existence, he knew. He was all alone now, but for the Oath, that constant unyielding presence.

A sound caught in his head, making his ears twitch. Maedhros instantly turned around to its source, drawing his sword halfway.

Two children, boys, dark heads sodden with water, blood on their clothes. Identical.

Twins.

His mind spiralled for a moment, caught off guard, a sudden surging, roiling wave of anger and shame and pain filling him.

He drew his sword a little further.

The boys clung together, cowering back in terror before him. The moment seemed frozen in time, stretched out into eternity.

_It would be so easy to slay them, to finish the work he had started here… to make it complete. It would change little in the grand scheme of things, even, if these two were to live or die._

Maedhros felt as though his mind were shattering into fragments, might-have-beens and things that never would be mingling with the unavoidable, bloody reality.

Suddenly, a great sickened weariness overtook him, and he felt his fingers slacken on the grip of the sword, his legs going weak. Maedhros dropped to his knees upon the ground, wet sand clinging, getting in the cracks in his armour.

“Go” he rasped at the twins, not raising his head. “Get out of here! Go! I cannot…” he covered his face with his hand. “Get away from this place! Get away from me, if you want to live.”

The boys wasted no time, and were gone from the room and down the deserted street, before Maedhros had raised his eyes.

He thought perhaps they were heading north.

——-

He was alone now, the jewels in his hand. He was alone at the end of the world, with nothing left but to die. The Silmarils burned him, and there was the fire at his feet, a yawning crack in the ground. If not the fire, then there was the sea, the cliffs falling away not far off.

Fire and water. Two opposites, two ways to die. Perhaps they had always been calling his name, tearing him in two. Perhaps his whole life had been one long, slow fall towards the end, towards the final choice before the darkness came.

He looked at the two Silmarils blistering his skin, searing it to bloody rawness. They made his eyes burn and water too, and he could barely look at them without tears falling on his cheeks.

 _Salt water_.

The wind singing on the empty shoreland.

Maedhros knew what he had to do.

He could not die, he knew; there must be one left, he still had a duty to be done.

He opened his hand, let one jewel fall into the fire, before sending the other in a wide arc, towards the pounding waves beyond the sea cliffs.

He would survive, he knew, because there was no one else to live on, to remain in the world. The voice on the wind, he knew now, would have to be his own, filtering through the sands of history, permeating the past, present and future until the ending of the world.

He had never been the one with a way with words; that had been his brother, who was now locked in the darkness with the others he had failed, like as not. Yet it had to be done.

Perhaps it would make no difference. Perhaps nothing he did made any difference.

Yet, in the end, that changed nothing.

Maedhros turned his face towards the sea.


End file.
